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Monday, January 05, 2009

My Dream Catcher

Ever since I was a little girl, my sleep has been fraught with nightmares. I am regularly awaken by my very own screams. So I was more than delighted when a friend gave me this Navajo dream catcher - pinned up above my bed, it will intercept nightmares in its net. Its design however is so exquisite that I think I may also wear it as a pendant, on a longish and very thin silver chain...

Coincidentally, Dream Catcher is the title of a book I have just read, Margaret Salinger's memoir of her father, the recluse J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher In The Rye among others; a moving and tender book, it also taught me much about the USA's chilling antisemitism in the early 20th century.I am also about to finish have just finished reading the infamous At Home In The World, in which Joyce Maynard betrays a most elementary, unspoken and sacred rule of relationships, keeping what's private private. If Maynard's relationship had not been with with Salinger, I doubt anyone would be interested in this endless, blandly written account of her life. I feel guilty about having read it, and it's not even the guilty pleasure of reading a gossip column...J.D. Salinger turned 90 on January 1.

30 comments:

Your nightmares sounds very difficult. You might try acupuncture; traditionally it deals with such issues. Franny and Zooey is my fav Salinger book, have you read it? I am almost done with Man who Painted, but keep skipping ahead to see what happened, then going back to catch the time line; very undisciplined.

D. MOLL - I had never heard of acupuncture for nightmares, thanks for the info; I'll research it.Of course I read Franny & Zooey. I like it very much; it always cracks me up when Zooey's in his bath and his mum Bess keeps on barging in... Actually, I read Zooey many times; it's my favorite part of the book.Enjoy the Vermeer book!

KARINA - I'm not surprised you like Carson McCullers... It's very you.

CANDACE - maybe next time you're in the Cove I can tell you more about my nightmares. I started having very violent and haunting nightmares when I was living in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war - between the ages of 5 and 8. I still have many dreams about the war, and war-related themes such as the Holocaust, though my family is not Jewish and was thus spared from the horrors of World War 2.

ANNIE - it's funny because the friend who gave me the dream catcher brought it back from New Mexico...I too love the Catcher In The Rye, and I read it many times. It never fails to move me and make me laugh - "it kills me", as Holden would say.

it's been my dream to take a seat in a literary course again (my undergrad degree is in economics). when i pop in on your blog i get the sense that my literary hunger for learning is touched... thanks a bunch!

Mary-Laure: It's no wonder that you suffer from nightmares. You were at a very impressionable age and dealing with violent times that probably made your parents feel terribly insecure and frightened as well.

Even when others do their best to protect children from negative emotions, those emotions bleed through to a certain degree.

You must have internalized a lot of the fear and insecurity that you experienced during those times.

Oh, how Dr. Candace runs at the mouth!

Elena: A dream catcher tattoo to help bring a loved one back to you in your dreams is both magical and moving.

ELENA - what a beautiful idea, to have the dream catcher tattooed on your arm as a way to invite your dying friend into your dreams... I hope it worked...

AIR DU TEMPS - your comment really meant a lot to me; it is one of my goals, on this blog, to share my enthusiasm about books and hopefully get some readers excited about what I'm sharing.So thanks. A lot.

Mary-Laure, your nightmares sound horrible. That was really nice of your friend to send you a dream-catcher. I have strange dreams sometimes and I often talk in my sleep but I rarely remember them. I don't know how I would handle the type of dreams you're describing...

I've yet to read Franny and Zooey, but now that I've read about Zooey and his mom from your comments I'm going to have to. :)

I so agree with that basic premise of keeping private things in relationships private - I'm constantly amazed that people I barely know expect me to tell them the most intimate details of my relationship simply because we happen to be chatting at a party over a glass of wine. My theory is: if I don't tell my mother, I don't tell you :)

I also used to have horrible nightmares when I was little, which were mainly connected to that horrible bomb-shelter we used to have in our old apartment in Israel, so I can empathise Mary-Laure.

GABBI - I hope you like Zooey. It tells the story of Zooey in his bath, trying to find some quiet to read an old letter from his brother. It's funny AND moving.

HILA - Ha, I love your theory! Mine is: if I wouldn't want my boyfriend to share that kind of info with HIS friends, I'm not sharing it with MINE.Isn't it terrible how we will always be haunted by our childhood war experiences? I can't imagine what it must be like for those who, unlike me, were truly hurt by the war.Also, when I see how haunted I am with the Holocaust (and the gulag - must stop reading Solzhenitsin), though neither are connected to my personal family history, I wonder what it must be like for those who actually went through it, or whose loved ones went through it.I hope you find some peace of mind in beautiful Australia.

GEORGIA - I'm delighted you found my blog, too. I am going to celebrate Barack Obama's inauguration with some posts about Kenya later this month, so stay tuned!

Dream-catchers! I have one too! they are very pretty with those feathers and beads.I'm sorry you have nightmares! I sometimes dream really weird things too but I can't exactly call them nightmares.. thank goodness those are very rare to me :) but other times I dream adventures or great stories,I love to jot down my dreams in a notebook I have.. when I go back and read them I remember them as a movie!xx

i love this, "it's not even the guilty pleasure of reading a gossip column..." and your dream connection to the Holocaust--i have also had some strange seed memory of that time, and have to be careful not to touch it too much. I think we can link to all the raw pain of humanity somehow.